ANNAN IN Last Four DEcADEs oF 18TH CENTURY. 169 
Sunday clothes are of English cloth. Epidemical fevers are un- 
known. Consumption and ague are rare. There is on the river 
a cotton work, about which 100 to 130 men, women, and children 
are commonly employed.’’ 
The common referred to by Sinclair consisted of 1800 acres 
of moorland, lying north of the Carlisle road. In 1801 it was 
divided among the burgesses and those landward heritors who 
enjoyed the right of servitude over it, the whole being burdened 
with the annual feu rent of £200. The poorer inhabitants of the 
town strongly disapproved of the action of the Council in dis- 
posing of land which could not fail to rise greatly in value; and 
expression was given to their indignation by a poetaster named 
James Fisher, who wrote :— 
“Tt made us welcome, ane an’ a’, 
Our horse an’ kye on it to ca’— 
But now it seems they’ve made a law 
An’ will the same fulfil, 
To tak’ this commonty awa’ 
In spite 0’ a’ our will. 
An’ it divide amang the lairds 
By akers, ruids, an’ fa’s, an’ yardes, 
In just proportion as regards 
Their houses, rents, an’ lan’s; 
Sae weel they ken to play their cards 
To ane anither’s han’s.’’ 
We must not forget that Annan Academy, famous as the 
Hinterschlag Gymnasium of “ Sartor Resartus,’’ came into exist- 
ence through an endowment set apart when the great moor was 
divided. If the burgh had retained its broad acres, Annan 
would have had no Academy at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, and some other town would have had the glory of 
educating Thomas Carlyle. 
In illustration of the foregoing paper, Mr Miller exhibited 
an old painting of Annan, which had been lent by Mr Mac- 
dougall, banker, Annan. It bears the date 1824; but, as Mr 
Miller remarked, the town in its exterior semblance did not alter 
greatly during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The 
photograph here inserted is given by permission of the owner of 
the painting. 
